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David Amess (Con, Southend West) moved that a Bill be brought in to make provision about methods of testing the safety of medicines.
He pointed to the risks in using medicines, explaining that there has been an increasing level of adverse drug reactions, that this was 'obviously unacceptable', and that 'action needs to be taken to improve the safety of medicines as far as possible.'
He asked whether it would be better to test medicines for safety differently, 'before they are released to the general public', before touching on clinical trials and animal testing.
'The pharmaceutical industry needs new mechanisms' he argued, and said that his Bill would call for animal testing to be compared with promising new technologies, concluding that 'the process will reveal which set of tests is more successful at predicting the safety of medicines in humans.'
The Bill is to be read a second time on Friday 22 October and be printed (Bill 59).
Progress:
House of Commons
1st reading: 20 July 2010
2nd reading: 4 February 2011
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